Wednesday, June 7, 2017

All Together -- Pentecost Sunday

These
words and phrases are about the extent of my knowledge of Spanish. I took
French in eighth grade and college. I took German in high school. I took Hebrew
and Greek in seminary, but I never took Spanish. I was told that Spanish was
easier to learn than other languages, but I was also told that to speak Spanish
you had to be able to roll your “r’s.” I can’t do that. But thanks to Sesame
Street and other friends, I can now
say a few words and a couple of relatively useless phrases.

Sadly
a few words and phrases don’t help me much when I meet people whose first
language is Spanish. I learned this quite vividly when we were living in New
York. Our church was asked to host some
Christian visitors from Costa
Rica who were traveling in the United
States for church related reasons. We
were assured that they all spoke excellent English, so finding host families
who spoke Spanish would not be necessary.

One
of the host families invited church folks over for a potluck in honor of our
Costa Rican guests. We were all excited to meet them, and learn more about them
and Costa Rica. Just
one problem; they did not actually speak English. A few of them spoke about as
many words in English as I speak in Spanish. But a woman who attended the local
Methodist church was a native Spanish speaker, and she was happy to come to the
potluck to help with translation.

That
was helpful in general terms, but it didn’t make individual conversations any
easier. That’s what happens at potlucks and events like it; you sit and get to
know each other in smaller groups. At first it seemed that it was going to
become a segregated party – English speakers with English speakers and Spanish
speaker with Spanish speakers. But many of us were trying. I sat next to a
young couple. The wife and I did a lot of smiling at each other. We would take a
bite of food, mime yummy, appreciative gestures, and then smile some more. She
knew a few words in English, and you’ve heard my Spanish. At first I didn’t
think there was any chance that we’d be able to communicate.

It’s
funny, though. The more comfortable we became with each other, the more we
started to understand each other. We used some words, but we also spoke in
gestures and pantomime. Eventually we were having a conversation about trying
to keep up with our houses and working. We were laughing, and it became as
comfortable and as familiar a conversation as any I’ve had with my oldest and
dearest friends. We found that we had a common language that went beyond words.
Our ability to understand one another’s language may have been limited, but we
understood each other in a deeper way, in a truly human way. We were together
in that moment in a way I could never have expected. It was a profound
experience.

But
even this incredibly powerful moment in my life cannot compare with the moment
we hear about in this most famous passage from Acts, chapter 2.The people
gathered in that place hear the good news in their own languages. They hear the
good news being spoken to them, translated for them, by the disciples, men they
knew to be Galileans who should not have been able to speak the native tongues
of Parthians and Medes and Elamites. What happened when they were there, all
together, should have been impossible, yet it happened.

What
I love about this passage from Acts is that the Spirit enters that place with a
bang. That is a profound understatement. The Spirit swooshes down upon them
like a violent wind. That sound, that wind, filled the entire house where the
disciples were staying. The sound of a violent wind has taken on a new meaning
since I moved to Oklahoma, and
my first response would have been to seek shelter, to hide from what was
coming. If the disciples thought something like that we don’t know; before they
even had time to register this awful, wonderful sound of wind and spirit
filling their home, filling them, they were descended upon, literally, by tongues
of fire. Those tongues of flame, forgive the pun, lit them up. Not only were
they able to speak new languages, they were transformed, completely and
utterly.

This
wild happening drew the crowds gathered in Jerusalem to
them. Jews from every part of the Diaspora were there, and hearing their own
languages confused and puzzled them. Along
with their confusion, there were skeptics in the crowd. While some immediately
believed that something wonderful and incredible and completely unexpected was
happening, others dismissed the whole thing as being a drunken coincidence. The
disciples weren’t filled with anything but new wine.

Peter
began his great sermon by dismissing this notion. This isn’t a drunken hoopla.
This is the outpouring of the Spirit. What is happening is a fulfilling of the
prophet Joel. The Spirit has been poured out on them. They are all together,
and they are now able to speak in new languages and do new things. And this has
all occurred because of Jesus the Christ. This has all happened because of the
good news he brought, the good news he lived.

I
know that I have used this quote before, but it bears repeating. Author and
theologian Barbara Brown Taylor once wrote, “That if you believe the Bible,
than there is no better proof that Jesus was who he said he was than the before
and after pictures of the disciples. Before Pentecost, they were dense, tired
bumblers who fled at the least sign of trouble. Afterwards they were fearless
leaders. They healed the sick and cast our demons. They went to jail gladly,
where they sang hymns until the walls fell down. How did this transformation
occur? You can read all about it in the book of Acts.”

Jesus
promised the disciples the coming of the Spirit. The last thing he told them
before he ascended into heaven was to go back to Jerusalem and
wait there for God’s promise to come true. They would be baptized by the Holy
Spirit there, he told them. They did as they were told. They went back to Jerusalem. They prayed and they did not have to wait
long for an answer. On the day of
Pentecost, the Jewish festival of weeks or the harvest which is set 50 days
after Passover, they were all together in one place when they got a crash
course in power.

That’s
really what happened, isn’t it? They got a crash course in power. When the Holy
Spirit came upon them, it came in with wind and flames and power. One
commentator wrote that we should consider the noise it must have made. Think
about the sounds and the sights that the disciples experienced. The coming of
the Spirit on that day of Pentecost was like a special effects show. But this
was a display that even Industrial Light and Sound, the company that has done
special effects work for everything from Star Wars to Star Trek, could not have
conceived.

More
importantly than what this immense descending of power sounded like and looked
like, is what it did. As Ms. Taylor wrote, the disciples went from being
scared, anxious, unsure, and insecure men, constantly misunderstanding the good
news that Jesus shared with them to men who were transformed. They preached
with authority and taught with passion and expertise. The disciples stood before huge, often
hostile crowds and preached the gospel. They spoke in whatever language was
necessary for them to be heard and understood. They baptized without
hesitation. Evangelism flowed from them like water. They suffered whatever
persecution and backlash came their way. When the power of the Holy Spirit came
upon them, they were transformed.

When
the power of the Holy Spirit came upon them, they were transformed.

It
seems that I pray all the time for transformation, for the power of the Holy
Spirit to move among us, to gift us with whatever is necessary so that we can
make a difference, so that we can spread the good news as individuals and as
the church. But as I read this familiar passage this week, I was feeling
discouraged and frustrated. Sure the Holy Spirit made a huge scene some two
thousand years ago, but where is it now? I could do with hearing the sound of
rushing wind that filled the disciples’ room? I could stand to see tongues of
flame resting on us today? Why can’t miraculous, unbelievable things happen
through us, just like it did for the disciples when they were able to speak in
different languages? As much as I pray for the Holy Spirit, I’m just not always
sure that the Spirit is there, that it’s moving, that it’s breathing new life
into our midst.

But
I read something in my studies that helped me reconsider the power of the Holy
Spirit. Someone wrote that power can be understood in two ways. Sometimes power
can be so intense that it erupts on you all at once. Think about the explosion
that would happen if a match were lit to even ten gallons of gasoline. But then
think about those same ten gallons of gasoline being channeled through the slow
burn of a car engine. I can drive for a couple of hundred miles on those ten
gallons. Power can explode among us. Or it can be channeled through us, all
together.

On
that Pentecost day, the power of the Holy Spirit exploded on the disciples. It
exploded in a way that brought new life, to the people who felt its power and
to the church created in its wake. Today, we may not always experience that
same explosive energy. But the power of the Spirit is alive and well right
here, right now. It is being continually channeled through us, whether we
recognize it or not. It still moves among us. It is breathing new life in our
midst. We cannot control its power. The Spirit blows where it will. But I know,
with renewed faith I know, that it is right here, where we are gathered all
together. So come Spirit, come. Give us new life, new hope, and send us out,
empowered, enlivened and enthusiastic to do God’s work in the world.